How Olympian Alexi Pappas Is Training for Her First Marathon

Alexi Pappas hasn’t run a marathon yet, but she has already learned an invaluable lesson about the distance from one of its greatest teachers.

Two weeks before the Greek Olympian spoke with Runner’s World by phone, she ran a grueling workout around Lake Mary in Mammoth, California. The prescribed session from her coach Andrew Kastor was four two-mile repeats at 9,000 feet, an altitude level that leaves exercisers gasping for air during an easy hike around the mountain.

Pappas, a Dartmouth and University of Oregon graduate with All-American honors in distances ranging from the 3,000-meter steeplechase to cross country, was slated to run six miles worth of interval work at a pace meant to prepare her for a marathon debut in Chicago on October 7.

The workout was not supposed to be glamorous. It was meant to hurt and build strength in her legs and in her mind.

After Pappas completed the third rep, she felt exhausted, and started to doubt whether she could continue the workout with the final interval. The fear of digging her body into a hole of fatigue overwhelmed her. She expressed her concern to Kastor, her coach, who suggested she rest for a moment and think about how she wanted to proceed.

As soon as he walked away, Pappas was approached by her training partner and coach’s wife, Deena Kastor.

“Deena pulled me aside and said, ‘This is the difference between anything in marathon training. This rep is marathon training. Just get it in,’” Pappas recalled of her conversation with the American women’s record-holder in the marathon.

“She said, ‘You can do this, but this is where you get all the gains. It’s [the interval] in there and you’re going to create it by doing it.’”

While listening to her mentor, Pappas knew that her words were coming from believing in her as a teammate and from years of experience as one of the best runners in history to ever race the marathon. Pappas had watched Kastor conquer moments of discomfort on the biggest stage—when she earned an Olympic bronze medal in Athens, for example—and she was ready for those moments by facing them every day in training.

This workout was Pappas’s moment.

“It seemed like this rep was that moment of choice and of transition where I could put in the work and be prepared to do that, too,” Pappas said. “It was like you could help yourself grow up a bit by doing it. You could help yourself evolve and help yourself learn that you can be in the uncomfortable place.”

Pappas completed the fourth interval and recalled feeling stronger than all of the previous reps. In the end, she embraced the challenge.

“I told her after she finished that interval, ‘See, now you know that in the marathon, when you think you don’t have another mile in you, you do,’” Deena Kastor said. “It’s really important to gain that tool, that mental and physical tool, because she took her body to a place that she didn’t think she could go. I think she has a huge gift going into the marathon.”

This particular mid-workout lesson is one of many that Pappas has received since she moved from Eugene, Oregon to Mammoth full-time for what she calls “marathon school.” Under Kastor’s program with the Mammoth Track Club, Pappas gets to run with a group of men and women whose training is geared towards longer distance events. Training in the mountain town has affirmed what the 28-year-old has known for a long time—that the marathon has always been in her future.

But a few months after the 2016 season ended, Pappas suffered from the first side-lining injury of her career—an overuse injury in her hamstring tendon—and was forced to rest. Unable to train as she used to, she spent her time on a number of creative projects, including the promotion of her film Tracktown which Pappas directed and starred in. She also moved to Mammoth during the healing process, too.

While Pappas hasn’t raced since the fall of 2016, she looks back on that break as a time used to successfully make a number of important transitions. It was a period of recalibration.

“I wouldn’t have given myself the adrenal break that I had by choice, but I feel different now than I did after Rio,” Pappas said. “I feel like I’m thriving and optimistic and full. I just feel buoyant and excited.”

While many athletes would find it tempting to wallow in the hardships of an injury, Pappas focused on finding the positive opportunities for growth. For example, instead of staying home after she was forced to withdraw from a race last year, Pappas attended an event where she was offered an opportunity to shoot a new film at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. She is also working on a memoir in essays called Bravey and developing a television series with her husband, filmmaker Jeremy Teicher.

Courtesy of Alexi Pappas

Flipping the script into something positive has been a mindful practice for Pappas.

“I think it takes hanging in there and staying on your own team,” she said. “That means figuring out the good things that come out of the change in the plan, whatever it is. Whether you fall on a run or sleep through practice, whether you miss a race because of an injury. It’s action-oriented so you create opportunities or you seek opportunities despite the change of plans.”

Now, with many months of quality training and preparation at “marathon school,” Pappas is approaching her debut in Chicago with the goal of embracing every new experience. Another one? She will toe the starting line wearing a custom uniform designed by her new sponsor, Champion—Pappas is the first professional runner to be signed by the athletic apparel company.

“You could help yourself evolve and help yourself learn that you can be in the uncomfortable place.”

Once the gun fires that Sunday, there are no time goals and no specific finish in her mind, but the aim is to arrive slightly undertrained and optimistic against a that includes two-time Olympian Amy Cragg and Olympic triathlon champion Gwen Jorgensen.

Whatever happens in the Chicago Marathon will be another opportunity for Pappas to embrace the challenge and commit herself to another transition. And her mentor knows that she already possesses the tools to create the moment for herself.

“I hope she comes off of the marathon so proud of her build-up and proud of the race itself that she sticks with the distance because I think this is where she belongs,” Deena Kastor said.

Taylor DutchTaylor Dutch is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas.

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